Nonsense
by ohmytheon
Summary: While under the influence of painkillers in the hospital, Riza accidentally hears Roy mumble something in his sleep. Apparently the Flame Alchemist is also a sleep talker.


**Author's Notes:** Someone sent me an ask in my tumblr inbox with the prompt: Royai, "You know I'm in love with you, don't you?" And wouldn't you also know that I am a weak biznatch and cave to writing peer pressure like it's nothing.

 **Disclaimer:** Nothing is mine. Not even the prompt.

* * *

 **Nonsense**

* * *

It's not her first time visiting Roy in the hospital and it certainly won't be her last, but each step she takes to reach his room echoes in her head like a warning sign. She could turn on her heels and leave right now, toss away the dumb tin of cookies that she always makes him when he's in the hospital, maybe even flee the country. He doesn't expect her to visit him for another day and what with the not-so pristine way she looks right now, he might not want to see her.

He might know that she's been awake for thirty hours - that she had to redo the cookies after she mistakenly put salt instead of sugar in the first batch - that she failed him utterly and completely and she can't bear to face him.

It's her fault that he's here. The image of bright red blood blossoming on the chest of his blue military uniform jumps to her mind and she clutches the cookies against her chest as she takes a sharp intake of breath. She should have been able to stop the shooter in time, but she was distracted by a cheering child in the crowd and didn't catch the glint of sunlight off the scope of the rifle in time.

Shot in the chest, and it took him nearly a minute before he collapsed to the ground. Twenty minutes to get to the hospital. Four hours in surgery. Two more hours of being forced to wait, only to told that she could not see him. Two hours to go home, shower his blood off of her skin and try to scrub the guilt away, and unsteadily force her hands to bake the little treats that he loved to get when he was hospitalized. Only one second for her heart to stop beating and everything in her mind to come to a screaming halt.

Riza tries to steady her breathing as she stands outside his door. Visiting hours are technically over, but when she meandered back inside like a ghost, no one denied her access. The doctor told her that Roy would more than likely still be unconscious from the aftereffects anesthesia and out of it at best from the pain medication, but that didn't matter to her. She still needs to see him: needs to see his chest rising and falling to let her know that he was breathing, his eyes twitching under his eyelids to tell her that he was dreaming, the frustrated twist of his lips into a frown that he always does in his sleep.

She needs to know that she didn't lose him because of a mistake.

And so she slips inside and walks over to his bed with nimble ease, the kind of silence that years of training as a sniper garnered her. With the moonlight hitting him just so, Roy looks years younger than he is. He's always had that look about him, but even more so when he's lying in a hospital bed. It reminds her painfully of their first night in the hospital after he lost his vision. He looked rather fragile then too, even though she knew he wasn't.

Still, it's hard to not see the way his life has worn him down. Roy puts up a strong facade and an even more cavalier show of bravado, but even he is not a man without his weaknesses, his hurts, and his pains. He's just as vulnerable as the rest of them in the end, especially to bullets. She knows that firsthand.

When she leans over to brush his messy hair out of his face, Riza is startled when Roy's eyelids begin to flicker open. She pulls her hand back just in time as he focuses his dark eyes on her. Well, mostly focuses. She can tell that he's a little hazy from having just woken up and the painkillers. He has always been so terribly susceptible to their effects.

"Captain?" He sounds groggy, like he's dragging the word out of his mouth, but he immediately starts to try to get up.

Riza sets the cookies down on the side table and puts a hand on his shoulder to guide him back down. "You shouldn't try to move, sir," she tells him, something he finds out when he winces in pain. The man was just as deplorable about keeping still and not overexerting himself when he was forced to cauterize his own wounds from his confrontation with Lust. "You haven't been out of surgery that long. You could tear the stitches or hurt yourself further."

"Doesn't hurt that much," Roy grumbles, his voice gravelly and low from having been unconscious for so long. She doesn't miss the flash of pain on his face as he finally settles back down, but also doesn't comment on it. "Bet it's just a scratch."

Sighing, Riza sits down in the chair by his bed. "It's a little more than a scratch." All that blood… She felt like it slipped over her hands like a glove. It had only been until Havoc had offered to take her home so she could shower had she realized that she was still covered in it.

"It's not…" His eyes begin to flutter again. Despite the fact that hes under the influence of some good drugs, he's still fighting to stay awake. She really wish he wouldn't. Then she can prolong in facing the inevitable: his disappointment in her, the shame for her failure to protect him, the fear that she had been so close to losing him. "It's not that…"

But then he drifts off again. Riza takes a quiet breath through a parted mouth and then hunkers down in the chair. Roy is a fighter through and through, but there is only so much he can do against medication.

Just as she starts to look him over again to make sure that everything else is okay, she begins to hear a very low noise. She blinks in confusion until she looks at Roy's face and sees that his lips are moving weakly. He's mumbling in his sleep. Painkillers make him do that sometimes. He used to speak in his sleep, especially when they were teenagers, though he would hotly deny it after. It didn't happen so much in his adulthood, but she caught him sleeping in his office a few times after hearing him speaking nonsense inside his interior office.

Part of her wants to ignore it as she fidgets with his blanket, but another part of her is too curious as well. The latter is much stronger. For once, it would be nice to hear him babble gibberish, something that would bring a smile to her face. To this day, one of her favorite things to recall was when she found Roy asleep against his desk at work, face pressed against his paperwork, as he mumbled about whether or not she would move to the moon with him when the orange people banished him from earth for drinking orange juice.

Instead, when Riza leans a little closer towards Roy's face, she's met with the mumbled words of, "You know I'm in love with you, don't you?"

Riza's face flushes red on the spot and she nearly collapses back into her seat. Out of all the things that she thought he might say - out of all the insane things that he could've babbled on about in his sleep - that was not one of them. She stares at him unblinkingly, her lips parted in shock, but then quickly snaps back to it, pressing her lips together and looking away from him.

Roy is asleep. He's asleep and under heavy medication. He's asleep after just being in surgery for hours. He's asleep after getting shot and nearly dying because of a mistake she made. It's just nonsense. It means nothing. It's just one of his sleep talking babbles. And besides, he could've been dreaming or thinking about anyone. He could've–

"…couldn't even say your name," Roy mumbles in his sleep. "Dying and I was choking on your name…" His face twists into something resembling pain and her heart surges in her chest. "Just want…to hold your hand…"

Though she knows it's unprofessional, Riza leans forward and takes one of Roy's clenched fist hand in both of hers, cupping it protectively. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but finds that the words won't come out. _I'm here,_ she thinks to say, but then she is afraid to wake him, terrified that his eyes will blink open and he'll look away from her in embarrassment or shame.

But then…no, she knows he won't. She knows in the way that he breathes out her name in the silence, like it's his first breath of fresh air. She knows in how his fist loosens in her grip and his tortured face smooths out as he subconsciously reacts to her touch.

Dropping her head, Riza places her forehead on top of her hands holding onto his and closes her eyes. She wills her heart to slow down as she listens to him mumble a little more in his sleep, every word tugging at the part of her soul that is solely devoted to him. He probably won't remember this in the morning, but he wouldn't even be able to acknowledge it if he did. Despite the fact that it cuts her, she prays that he won't remember, because if he does, it will only wound him and she can't afford for him to hurt anymore because of her in any way.


End file.
